Three gifted students from the Middle and Upper Schools won a 2024 competition to perform internationally.

Each year, the International Association for Musically Gifted Children (IAMGC) hosts a piano competition to identify talented young people to perform at acclaimed international venues around the world during the summer. In 2024, three Sidwell Friends students, Ahana Rao ’29 and siblings Ethan Chang ’30 and Norah Chang ’28, earned spots on the IAMGC tour. 

The two Middle Schoolers and one Upper Schooler all study piano under Dr. Bella Oster at the European Academy of Music and Art in Silver Spring, Maryland. Rao described the competition as rigorous. “We had periodic tests every few weeks,” she said. “We were graded on our quality of playing based on different aspects, like memorization, articulation, and dynamics.” This year, the winners performed in concert halls in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, and in addition to performing, they were able to take in important cultural sites to round out the experience.

Ethan Chang, who admires Norwegian composer Edward Grieg, said that in Copenhagen the trio visited the Tivoli Gardens, the Hans Christian Andersen–inspired Little Mermaid sculpture, and the iconic Round Tower. In Stockholm, they toured the Vasa Museum, the Viking Museum, the Nobel Prize Museum, and the fish market. In Helsinki, they checked out a Moomin shop (“Moomin” is one of Finland’s—and Scandinavia’s—most beloved children’s characters) and the island fortress of Suomenlinna, a World Heritage Site. Finally, they crossed the Baltic Sea to Tallinn, Estonia, where they saw the Kiek in de Kök tower and the city’s town hall. 

Still, for these teens, who spend the majority of the year juggling homework with up to two hours of piano practice every day, it was often the smaller moments of the trip that stood out to them. “I really enjoyed going on a boat and playing cards with all my piano friends,” says Rao, whose favorite piece is Joseph Haydn’s Sonata in D major. “Everyone is stressed and tense around piano performance time, and it felt like a nice break of relaxation.” Then there was the food: “The bread and pastries in Europe were better than anything I’d ever had before,” she recalled. For Ethan Chang, the simple pleasures stood out, too: “I liked eating the ice cream we bought at a store and drinking orange juice on a nice warm day in Finland.”

Still, the music and the performances were the focus. “My favorite experience was when we went to check out the concert hall in Finland,” says Norah Chang, who especially enjoys playing Chopin’s ballades and Beethoven’s sonatas. “There was a huge billboard that displayed our piano school and the days we were performing, advertising our work to the Finnish people.”

All three Sidwell Friends students agree that studying piano benefits other areas of their lives as well, especially the ability to deeply focus. But ultimately what really draws them to the piano is the aesthetic connection music creates between people. “Anyone can appreciate classical music,” says Rao. “The piano music I play has no words to go along with it, so anyone in the world can see the beauty in it. In music, there is no language barrier, and that can really bring a community together. It’s a universal language that people can use to express themselves and that anyone can comprehend.”